Page 1Discovered in November 1970, Genie is presumably the most thoroughly researched case history of a feral child. From ages 2 and a half to 13 and a half, Genie’s father isolated her to a room constrained in a homemade harness on a potty seat. On nights she wasn’t forgotten, Genie would be put into a sleeping bag fashioned into a sort of straitjacket, and laid into a crib covered with chicken wire. Genie’s father prohibited her brother and mother to speak to her, and would only bark and growl to reprimand her from defying him. Genie’s brother was put in charge of feeding her mostly milk and baby foods.

Maya Pine stated in her article “The Civilizing of Genie” that “The case came to light when Genie’s 50-year old mother ran away from her 70-year-old husband after a violent quarrel and took the child along.” On November 4, 1970, while her mother was looking for services for the blind, she inadvertently stumbled into a welfare office in Temple City, California. Upon noticing the young girl’s thin sickly condition, unnatural posture, and faltering gait, a social worker presumed Genie was six or seven years old and possibly autistic. Upon learning Genie was actually 13 years old, the social worker notified her supervisor, who called the police. Her parents were charged with child abuse, and Genie was taken to Children’s Hospital Los Angeles. Genie’s father conveniently shot himself on the day he was due to appear in court, leaving a letter that read, “The world will never understand.” In addition, the charges were dropped against Genie’s mother because she too had been suffering abuse from her psychotic controlling husband.

Page 2Upon arriving to the Psychiatry Division of Children’s Hospital, the doctors observed Genie displaying many crude and unusual behaviors. Genie displayed signs of distress in the most unconventional way, flailing her arms, scratching at her face, urinating, and blowing her nose violently into her clothes, all the while not uttering a sound. Genie would also nonchalantly masturbate often in front of anyone occasionally using a variety of objects. While the only documented productive vocabulary Genie uttered included stopit and nomore, some of the few words Genie could understand included “red,” “blue,” “green,” “brown,” “mother,” “walk,” “go,” “door,” “jewelry box,” and “bunny.” As Susan Curtiss stated in her book, Genie: A Psycholinguistic Study, “For [scientists], the primary question was what, if any, language abilities lay unrevealed in her eerie silence. Could she [eventually come to] understand language?”(10)

Once she was moved to the hospital Rehabilitation Center in December, which offered a wider variety of rehabilitation programs her social attitudes, physical condition, cognitive, and intellectual abilities began to steadily enhance and increase. She began to develop closer relationships with some of the adults in her life. Genie began to gain weight, grow taller, and show signs of breast development. Once Genie attained a more healthy weight, she began menstruating. Since Genie was no longer prepubescent, the scientific world could allegedly test the hypothesis of the ‘critical period’ that proposed her language acquisition would most likely be significantly impaired. Notable research states in Susan Curiss’s book, Genie: A Psycholinguistic Page 3

Study, records “In January, Genie received a score of 4 years, 9 months on the Leiter International Performance Scale, a nonverbal test of cognitive abilities.” (14) While, “[i]n April, when the Leiter was repeated, she passed all items through the 4-year level, half at the 5-year level and half at the 6-year level.” (Curtiss 14) She began to learn how to perform routine tasks, such as cleaning up, dressing, and bathing herself. After seven months of therapy, Genie could walk unsteadily, and was...

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...Genie lived 13 years of her life in a Los Angeles suburb with her mother, her father and her older brother. When Genie was one, her Grandmother on her father's side died and they all moved into her old house. Her father insisted they leave his mothers room untouched even though this meant they all had to sleep in the living room. All except Genie who was given the back room. This room wasn't furnished or decorated and was away from the rest of the house.
During the day time Genie was kept tied to a potty chair and during the night time she slept in a caged crib, tied into a straight jacket so she could not move around. They did not potty train her, they did not teach her to speak, they did not love her, she had no stimulation whatsoever and she lived this way for 12 years. What's more in order to keep her quiet her father would growl at her from behind the door, like a dog and sometimes he would beat her with a stick….
No talking was allowed at all near the girl. Her older brother was charged with feeding her, but he was not allowed to talk to her. She was given only baby food and ceral.
Genie had other siblings. A sister was placed in the garage when she was two and a half months old because her crying disturbed her father. She died of pnemonia. A brother died when he was two days old from supposedly choking on his own saliva.
Her father believed she was mentally retarded although she was...

...to the environment of speaking people?” (Searchinger, 1995a). There have been cases in which children, deprived from a language, were then later exposed (Curtiss, 1977). Although they were able to comprehend and interact using that particular language, they were not able to fully master it to the extent of a normal adult (Curtiss, 1977).
In the 1970s a controversial case of a thirteen-year old girl, Genie, who had spent her entire life completely isolated from anyone (Curtiss, 1977). She was found severely malnourished and carried herself like a bunny (Curtiss, 1977). Genie’s mother, who had been in contact with her, stated that she could understand a few words (Curtiss, 1977). The child was admitted to the hospital and after several months underwent intense linguistic observation and investigation (Curtiss, 1977). Upon further treatment and observation, the hospital team discovered Genie was able to understand a fair amount of information, based on the fact that she maintained good eye contact and paid special attention to faces when spoken to (Curtiss, 1977).
Although Genie was able to understand and speak at a coherent level (Curtiss, 1977), results from several dichotic tests revealed that she had no left hemisphere facility, indicating she had been using the right hemisphere for language function (Yule, 2010). The hypothesis regarding this critical period introduces the idea that part of the left hemisphere of the brain is...

...them about it and find out their opsand then write a report for me? Any information or suggestions about this proposed scheme would be welcome.” Proposed Incentive Scheme Terms of reference Mr Jules Laval, Office Manager, has asked me to write this report on a proposed incentive scheme offering rewards, possibly financial, to members of staff for money-saving or ways to improve work practices.
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A sample of workers were questioned individually and asked for their opinions.
Findings
Most workers thought an incentive scheme was a good idea.
The majority of these preferred financial reward as an incentive.
Some workers suggested time off instead.
A few thought it was the job of management to come up with new ideas
Conclusions
In general most workers were in favour of an incentive scheme offering financial rewards.
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20 minutes
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1.
Business English Writing: ESP: English for special purpose
EVP: English for
vocational
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V
ocational: To deal with matters concerning business.
To sum up: Business English Writing is practical in business circle.
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...﻿Psycholinguistics
Content:
What is Psycholinguistics?
What is language?
What is a first/second/foreign language?
How is language acquired/learnt?
What are some of the problems that learners of a second/foreign language face and how can teachers deal with these difficulties?
Psycholinguistics is the study of the psychological and neurobiological factors that enable humans to acquire, use, comprehend and produce language.Psycholinguistics covers the cognitive processes that make it possible to generate a grammatical and meaningful sentence out of vocabulary and grammatical structures, as well as the processes that make it possible to understand utterances, words and texts.
Language refers to the specifically human capacity for acquiring and using complex systems of communication. Human language is unique in being a symbolic communication system that is learned instead of biologically inherited. Symbols are sounds which have meaning given to them by the users. Originally, the meaning is arbitrarily assigned. For instance, the English word "dog" does not in any way physically resemble the animal it stands for.
Language is processed in many different locations in the human brain, but especially in two areas called the Broca’s and Wernicke’s areas, after the two scientists. Humans acquire language through social interaction in early childhood, and children generally speak fluently when they are around three years...

...Susan Wiley (‘Genie’)
* Genie was discovered on 4th November 1970 in Los Angeles.
* The thirteen year old girl had been confined to a small room and spent most of her life often tied to a potty chair.
* The girl was given the name Genie to protect her identity and privacy. "The case name is Genie. This is not the person's real name, but when we think about what a genie is, a genie is a creature that comes out of a bottle or whatever, but emerges into human society past childhood. We assume that it really isn't a creature that had a human childhood,” explained Susan Curtiss in a documentary called Secrets of the Wild Child (1997).
* Both parents were charged with abuse, but Genie's father committed suicide the day before he was due to appear in court, leaving behind a note stating that "the world will never understand."
* Before she was discovered, she spent most of her days tied naked to her potty chair only able to move her hands and feet. When she made noise, her father would beat her. Her father, mother, and brother rarely spoke to her. The rare times her father did interact with her, it was to bark or growl.
* Both the general public and also the scientific community were interested in her case. Psycholinguist and author Harlan Lee explained that "our morality doesn’t allow us to conduct deprivation experiments with human beings, these unfortunate people are all...

...GENIE
It is hard for most of us to even imagine being locked in a bedroom for thirteen years—strapped to a potty chair and being physically abused. Unfortunately, social isolation, such as this, does affect many innocent children. Studies have proven that social isolation can have devastating effects on a child’s life.
A feral child, referred to as Genie, spent nearly the first thirteen years of her life locked in a bedroom strapped to a potty chair. She was a victim of one of the most severe cases of social isolation in U.S. History. Genie wasn’t allowed to speak, as her father would beat her if she would make any noise. On November 4, 1970, she was rescued by authorities and taken to Children’s Hospital in Los Angeles. Hospital staff hoped it wasn’t too late to nurture her back to normality. Genie had inhuman characteristics, as she was nearly entirely silent and had developed a “bunny walk”. Scientists questioned whether these characteristics were due to the isolation or whether she had been born with them. According to the book—Society in Focus by William E. Thompson and Joseph V. Hickey, heredity and environment both play a vital position in human development (2011 p. 86).
Genie’s case closely relates to another situation involving social isolation in the late 1700’s. Victor of Aveyron (also known as the “Wild Boy of Aveyron”) was also a feral child who lived majority of his childhood naked and...

... Genie: A Scientific Tragedy
Genie tells the story of a 13 year old girl who was secluded throughout her childhood years and into her teens with little or no stimulation. In the book, we see how the scientists and linguists tried to help her understand the world around her and interact with people around her. The linguists tried to get her to speak and express her emotions instead of gesturing or pointing every time she needed something. According to the linguists and scientists that studied her, she was a non-verbal communicator.
Language is a way of communicating with other people around us; it can be spoken, written, or signed. I believe language is innate; it is biological. We start speaking when we’re still toddlers, with our first words usually being ‘momma” or “dada”. We scream when we need to be changed, fed, burped, restless, etc. We point to things we want and make up words for other things we want and need. We are born with the ability to communicate with people around us, whether verbally or non-verbally. To understand someone, you do not necessarily have to speak. Hearing impaired people communicate with each other by signing and gesturing.
It is easier to learn a language between the ages of 2 and 5, because as we get older, our ability to learn a different language and speak it becomes difficult. Genie was slow to speak because she wasn’t given the chance to express...

...STORY OF GENIEGenie is the name used for a feral child discovered by a social worker in Los Angeles, California. From the age of twenty months Genie’s father chained her to a potty-chair and isolated her in a room. When she was found, she was severely malnourished and almost mute. When her case brought some interest to scientists, she became the focus of an investigation to discover if there was a critical age for the development of language in children. Since then Genie has been staying in an adult foster home. Genie’s story has given a rude awakening to everyone who hears it and is inspiring to anyone who supports child abuse. Genie is a modern-day “wild child.”
At the age of twenty months Genie was just learning how to speak when her doctor told her parents that she appeared to be slightly retarded. Genie’s father took his advice to the extreme, believing she was retarded. He then chained her to a potty-chair twenty-four hours a day. At night, if he would remember, he restricted her to a sleeping bag that was kept in an oversized crib with a cover made of metal. If she ever tried to speak her father would beat her. Her mother or her older brother was also restricted to the house; for fear that they would tell someone what he was doing to Genie. Her mother went to a social worker on November 4, 1970 with her mother and Genie. She wanted to know what the...